Sam Harris.org Reader Forumhttps://www.samharris.org/forum/viewthread8979/
Sam Harris.org Reader ForumenCopyright 20162016-12-07T20:08:57+00:00That’s the sound of i-n-e-v-i-t-a-b-i-l-i-t-y, Mr. Andersonhttps://www.samharris.org/forum/viewthread8979/viewthread/69042/
https://www.samharris.org/forum/viewthread8979/viewthread/69042/#When:00:30:00Z<p><a href="https://www.samharris.org/?URL=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.businessinsider.com.au%2Fstephen-hawking-ai-automation-middle-class-jobs-most-dangerous-moment-humanity-2016-12%3Fr%3DUS%26IR%3DT"><strong>Stephen Hawking: Automation and AI is going to decimate middle class jobs</strong> (<em>Business Insider</em> (AU)</a></p>
<blockquote><p><em>Artificial intelligence and increasing automation is going to decimate middle class jobs, worsening inequality and risking significant political upheaval, Stephen Hawking has warned.</p>
<p>In a column in The Guardian, the award-winning physicist wrote that “the automation of factories has already decimated jobs in traditional manufacturing, and the rise of artificial intelligence is likely to extend this job destruction deep into the middle classes, with only the most caring, creative or supervisory roles remaining.”</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>It’s a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy, from the point of view of anyone to have even dabbled in superficial study of history and thus uncovered the upheaval that technological development inherently entails.&nbsp; Notwithstanding, the all but irrevocable path our species is careening down, will surely make the societal malaise that we’re now in the throes of, look like a utopic Shangri La of harmony, once the vast majority of the population of hereinbefore trained automatons, are borne out to be either grotesquely ill-equipped to participate in the workforce/s of the future — <em>i.e.</em>, are not computer coders—itself a strictly finite career—or skilled smiths capable of <em>in situ</em> repair of our future synthetic overlords —&nbsp; or (in their congenitally cursed capacity as weak, gelatinous, glorified bovine with parasitic, viral stylings) simply are fundamentally no longer capable of proffering anything worth availing.</p>
<p>Couple this with the environmental inclemency bearing down on the planet like a foreboding miasma of noxious fossil fuel refinery flatulence — something many “post-brain-function” <span style="font-size:9px;"><em><strong>[Compound Word of the Year, 2017]</strong> <span style="color:blue;">[citation needed]</span></em></span> intellectual retardates are still in delusional, posterity-imprecating, dullard denial of — and we have the ingredients for what could perhaps prove to be a spæcial extinction level gumbo! ?</p>
<p>Relevant viewing:<br />
<a href="https://www.samharris.org/?URL=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.imdb.com%2Ftitle%2Ftt0328832%2F"><em>The Animatrix</em> (2003)</a><br />
<a href="https://www.samharris.org/?URL=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.imdb.com%2Ftitle%2Ftt0898367%2F"><em>The Road</em> (2009)</a><br />
<a href="https://www.samharris.org/?URL=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.imdb.com%2Ftitle%2Ftt0470752%2F"><em>Ex Machina</em> (2015)</a></p>2016-12-05T00:30:00+00:002 things Sam had spoken onhttps://www.samharris.org/forum/viewthread8979/viewthread/69032/
https://www.samharris.org/forum/viewthread8979/viewthread/69032/#When:05:50:39Z<p>Look I am by far not as sophisticated as most in these forums certainly… high school drop about to be honest… but I’ve been listening to Sam quite regularly these past Oh, 8 months and enjoyed reading “The end of faith” emensly.. so here my thing I believe it was at the yearly Isaac Asimov seminar or a couple of these ideas were broached.<br />
First that we live in The Matrix<br />
Second that’s more likely that we live in a simulation than not<br />
And third that is evident and will be far smarter than us and so we can’t even imagine the turn of my take</p>
<p>Damn I thought may or may not be that big of deal but ... why would a future race of humans who could do simulations far better than what we can now be running simulations of human civilization? Could it possibly be to integrate into that simulation the AI that they have yet to release on the real world to see what parameters and what conditions bring about the best AI I am in fact the AI of the future…or not if I fail to develop correctly in this simulation??&nbsp; Deep ? Or No? Lol thanks</p>2016-12-02T05:50:39+00:00The Multiverse and Free Willhttps://www.samharris.org/forum/viewthread8979/viewthread/69028/
https://www.samharris.org/forum/viewthread8979/viewthread/69028/#When:06:38:53Z<p>Does anyone else see determinism and a multiverse as contradictory?&nbsp; I believe determinism and the lack of free will to be true and that strongly opposes a belief in a multiverse.&nbsp; A multiverse claims that there are infinite universes to where this exact moment is happening but the future will unfold differently.&nbsp; For example, in Sam’s podcast with Max Tegmark they discuss how their conversation could and actually does go different ways in different universes.&nbsp; Max proclaims in one of the universes he will start speaking french.&nbsp; However, if every past moment leads to this specific one, can’t there only be one next outcome in determinism? If so why/how would I behave differently in a multiverse?&nbsp; I’m shocked Sam hasn’t seen this contradiction himself (maybe he has but I haven’t read it).&nbsp; Please think about this point, if this exact moment exists exactly the same somewhere else, there would be no deterministically valid reason for me to act differently in my next action.&nbsp; And if any previous action on earth would have been done differently, this exact situation and moment would not have occurred.&nbsp; The only way for me to behave differently is to change something in the past, which in turn wouldn’t lead to this exact moment. I would love to hear some thoughts and opinions on this.</p>2016-12-01T06:38:53+00:00Science Finds God?https://www.samharris.org/forum/viewthread8979/viewthread/69011/
https://www.samharris.org/forum/viewthread8979/viewthread/69011/#When:09:59:08Z<p>I’ve been following the stream(more like a live podcast with video and a chatroom) of this activist group for around 2 years, and I’ve gained immense insights into reason and logic, rhetoric, morals.</p>
<p>What seemed odd was that the face of the movement which would usually speak and interact with the viewers would never get logically defeated in an argument. His rhetoric is exceptionally strong and he seems to have a solid general understanding of neuroscience, physics, quantum mechanics, and other sciences.</p>
<p>That movement has just released their new documentary a few days ago, called “Science Finds God?” and it’s about a new kind of Spinozism, the religion in which Albert Einstein and Carl Sagan believed, but more fine tuned with the updated findings of neuroscience, making this a super fascinating Neuro-theology discovery.</p>
<p>I could go on and on, but I think the docu is packed with all the info, so I’d like to know your opinions about Neuro-Spinozism/Athenism, which is both a religion and a science based paradigm.</p>
<p>“Science Finds God?” Documentary: <a href="https://www.samharris.org/?URL=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DSXDw73rToPE">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXDw73rToPE</a><br />
“A simple click” The book on how to click: <a href="https://www.samharris.org/?URL=https%3A%2F%2Flogicnation.org%2Fwiki%2FA_simple_click">https://logicnation.org/wiki/A_simple_click</a></p>2016-11-27T09:59:08+00:00What is the probability of the first cells to emerge without involving a guiding intelligent force ?https://www.samharris.org/forum/viewthread8979/viewthread/68999/
https://www.samharris.org/forum/viewthread8979/viewthread/68999/#When:14:57:21Z<p>What is the probability of the first cells to emerge without involving a guiding intelligent force ?</p>
<p>Would you say that it is plausible that a tornado over a junkyard could produce a 747 ?<br />
Would you say that it is plausible that mindless random chance can write a book, or produce the hardware and software of a computer ?</p>
<p>The cell is like a factory, that has various computer like hierarchically organized systems of hardware and software, various language based informational systems, a translation system, hudge amounts of precise instructional/specified, complex information stored and extract systems to make all parts needed to produce the factory and replicate itself, the scaffold structure, that permits the build of the indispensable protection wall, form and size of its building, walls with gates that permits cargo in and out, recognition mechanisms that let only the right cargo in, has specific sites and production lines, “employees”, busy and instructed to produce all kind of necessary products, parts and subparts with the right form and size through the right materials, others which mount the parts together in the right order, on the right place, in the right sequence, at the right time, which has sophisticated check and error detection mechanisms all along the production process, the hability to compare correctly produced parts to faulty ones and discard the faulty ones, and repeat the process to make the correct ones; highways and cargo carriers that have tags which recognize where to drop the cargo where its needed, cleans up waste and has waste bins and sophisticated recycle mechanisms, storage departments, produces its energy and shuttles it to where its needed, and last not least, does reproduce itself.</p>
<p>The salient thing is that the individual parts and compartments have no function by their own. They had to emerge ALL AT ONCE, No stepwise manner is possible, all systems are INTERDEPENDENT and IRREDUCIBLE. And it could not be through evolution, since evolution depends on fully working self replicating cells, in order to function.<br />
How can someone rationally argue that the origin of the most sophisticated factory in the universe would be probable to be based on natural occurence, without involving any guiding intelligence ?</p>
<p>To go from a bacterium to people is less of a step than to go from a mixture of amino acids to a bacterium. — Lynn David Margulis</p>
<p><a href="https://www.samharris.org/?URL=http%3A%2F%2Freasonandscience.heavenforum.org%2Ft2364-the-irreducible-code-instructed-process-to-make-cell-factories-and-machines-points-to-intelligent-design">http://reasonandscience.heavenforum.org/t2364-the-irreducible-code-instructed-process-to-make-cell-factories-and-machines-points-to-intelligent-design</a></p>2016-11-25T14:57:21+00:00Supernova Short Filmhttps://www.samharris.org/forum/viewthread8979/viewthread/68995/
https://www.samharris.org/forum/viewthread8979/viewthread/68995/#When:17:49:22Z<p>This artistic simulation was created using only an aquarium, ink and water.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.samharris.org/?URL=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DHE-A6bqnZZc">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HE-A6bqnZZc</a></p>2016-11-24T17:49:22+00:00Time travel as proof of lack of free willhttps://www.samharris.org/forum/viewthread8979/viewthread/68992/
https://www.samharris.org/forum/viewthread8979/viewthread/68992/#When:08:14:13Z<p>The last argument Sam had with Dan Dennet produced this incredible fallacy… and it took me these several months to cool off sufficiently to be even able to write this post. I know it wont matter much, because once that red line is passed no actual logic or common sense or actual facts can return someone back from utter nonsense and ego tripping. </p>
<p>But i just cant tolerate someone who is proclaiming to be a scientists spout such ludicrous nonsense as their ultimate proof of “lack of free will”.</p>
<p>Ive listened to their talk until it reached the point where Sam makes his “final” and “strongest” argument. Then i had to stop or i would punch my screen.</p>
<p>He says that… jesus christ… he says that if you would send a man back in time, he would repeat all his actions and decisions in exact same way - because the circumstances and conditions surrounding and influencing his decisions would be exactly the same…</p>
<p>And nobody batted an eye to that proclamation.<br />
Not even Dan, as far as i understood, although he could have used this to completely destroy all of the Sam arguments.</p>
<p><br />
Maybe Sam doesnt know, being a “scientist” and all, maybe you folks dont know but… TIME TRAVEL ISNT POSSIBLE!<br />
As such, nobody can make any claims about what would happen if we could travel back in time. None!</p>
<p>Time travel is not only impossible according to everything our actual science knows, but the fundamental law of the universe is against it. Everything in this universe is against it. </p>
<p>We do have a specific kind of fiction that has been exploring this idea in every possible imaginable way for decades now. And even in fantasies where such feats are imagined to be possible simply for fun, they only create paradoxes. At best. Destruction of whole universes at worst. Yet… for Sam none of that is relevant or worthy to think about. Because he knows what happens when we time travel back into the ... past…</p>
<p>Whats more, even if we imagine it would be possible just for kicks - there is no way anyone can claim it would produce exactly same behavior, exactly same results - because of the butterfly effect - so well known in chaos mathematics.</p>
<p>In conditions or system or environment of great complexity - unpredictability naturally arises from the system-environment itself.<br />
Because every single tiny bit (as far down as the Planck allows) of that environment is interacting with all others.<br />
In such systems we can only speak about probabilities of something happening. Nothing else.</p>
<p>And yes, the same works for Quantum mechanics, human consciousness and free will.</p>
<p>So Sam is not only basing his proclamations on something we know is literally impossible to do, but he is also making further proclamations that are equally impossible to proclaim, based literally on argument from extreme ignorance fallacy (nobody can know what would happen if we could do the impossible) and equally non scientific.</p>
<p>-slight edit for clarity-</p>2016-11-24T08:14:13+00:00Consciousness through computationhttps://www.samharris.org/forum/viewthread8979/viewthread/68960/
https://www.samharris.org/forum/viewthread8979/viewthread/68960/#When:07:53:07Z<p>Listening to the latest podcast with David Deutsch I was wondering the following.</p>
<p>Suppose, as I <em>think</em> was taken for granted by Sam and David, that</p>
<p>(a) consciousness emerges in some way out of (an appropriately complex form of) computation, where by computation we mean something that could in principle be implemented in a universal Turing machine or other form of (possibly hierarchical or distributed) state machine </p>
<p>and</p>
<p>(b) any ‘computationally equivalent’ implementation would result in the same or similar experience of consciousness</p>
<p>Then does it follow that:</p>
<p>(1) a system implementing a single threaded computation that (via the perspective of interleaving) is computationally equivalent to a conscious brain activity would result in a similar conscious experience (the state of this system would still need to be distributed, just the updating of state is carried out in a single threaded manner) </p>
<p>(2) given a computation that results in conscious experience, the same or similar conscious experience should still emerge <em>even if the time frames between the (enormously many) steps of the original computation were significantly varied</em> - e.g. randomly we chose some steps to take a millisecond and others one hundred years.</p>
<p>[Notes: In (2) one needs to assume the changes in duration of steps must respect computational equivalence, which is trivial if we assume the computation is single threaded. Also, I have assumed the computations comprise discrete transitions - but even if we were talking about some type of hybrid continuous/discrete system, I believe the questions still stand.]</p>
<p>To me the conclusions (1) and (2) don’t seem plausible as they seem at odds with some of the phenomenal aspects of consciousness - such as the “thickness of time” (discussed by N Humphreys in Soul Dust and other books), or the unifying and integrating nature of the conscious experience (as discussed in Chapter 11 of Susan Blackmore’s Consciousness, An Introduction).</p>
<p>Would love to hear other perspectives. </p>
2016-11-18T07:53:07+00:00Poverty on Native American Reservations - The Answer, My Friend, Is Blowing in the Windhttps://www.samharris.org/forum/viewthread8979/viewthread/68947/
https://www.samharris.org/forum/viewthread8979/viewthread/68947/#When:18:45:48Z<p>Poverty on Native American Reservations - The Answer, My Friend, Is Blowing in the Wind - <a href="https://www.samharris.org/?URL=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2008%2F10%2F10%2Fworld%2Famericas%2F10iht-10wind.16835712.html">http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/10/world/americas/10iht-10wind.16835712.html</a>&nbsp; </p>
<p>A number of Native American Reservations are in the nation’s best wind farm states.&nbsp; Presently the government subsidizes big coal and big oil and gas.&nbsp; Instead, what if that taxpayer money was used to build a new state-of-the-art national power grid?&nbsp; This would make power supply and distribution less vulnerable to cyber attack - a <strong>very important</strong> priority in our national defense.&nbsp; It would also enable us to conduct clean power from wind farms in the prairies to distant cities - it would be a renewable source of green energy - wealth for tribes and ranchers on the plains.</p>
<p>Even if Trump and his cohorts, dismiss worldwide scientific consensus and claim that human-caused climate change is a hoax perpetuated by the Chinese, (!!!!!) can the Republican Congress see that improving our power-grid <strong>infrastructure</strong> is a national defense priority?&nbsp; (see topic title - ‘The Maginot Line of 2016’).&nbsp; Can they see that the enormous power of the wind is virtually untapped in the U.S. while pollution-causing fossil fuels foul the atmosphere of the world?&nbsp; </p>
<p><a href="https://www.samharris.org/?URL=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.scientificamerican.com%2Farticle%2Fmilitary-leaders-urge-trump-to-see-climate-as-a-security-threat%2F">https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/military-leaders-urge-trump-to-see-climate-as-a-security-threat/</a></p>
<p>PBS - NOVA - CYBER WAR THREAT - Could terrorists turn off half the power in the U.S.?&nbsp; <a href="https://www.samharris.org/?URL=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pbs.org%2Fwgbh%2Fnova%2Fmilitary%2Fcyberwar-threat.html">http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/military/cyberwar-threat.html</a></p>
2016-11-15T18:45:48+00:00The “J” stands for ‘John’&nbsp; (John Connor)https://www.samharris.org/forum/viewthread8979/viewthread/68935/
https://www.samharris.org/forum/viewthread8979/viewthread/68935/#When:01:35:01Z<p>From the <em>Terminator</em>&nbsp; film franchise, that is.</p>
<p>Drumpf sees himself as the leader of “the resistance” — a term often availed by right-wing sensationalist news sectors as a banner to gather under in their “fight” against “the establishment” (...among other more, erhm… <em>reptilian</em> enemies).&nbsp; However, his ‘battle’ for the “working man”, is not a fight with “the elite” (any longer) — that war would have had to have been declared back before Clinton rolled the red carpet out for Chinese at the WTO, sans any checks or balances.&nbsp; No; Drumpf is at war with…<br />
<span style="font-size:18px;">”<strong>The Machines</strong>”</span>.</p>
<p>His promises of “So many jobs… Magnificent jobs!”, flooding back into the U.$., is a statement of utter ignorance and certainly much mendacity.&nbsp; The “jobs” he speaks of, have mostly all fallen to <strong>automation</strong> (facilitated and expedited by rapacious reprobates suffering monetary myopia) and cannot be gotten back.&nbsp; Drumpf could cut taxes to <strong>zero</strong>—why should anyone pay if the president doesn’t, right?—but it would only bring the automation back to the country, not the jobs.</p>
<p>The only job-creation that would come from his demagogue brain flatulence being realised, would come in the form of finite construction and in certain, very specialised technical fields — fields that are not representational of the “rust belt” constituency that the mainstream media are delegating responsibility for for the Drumpf ascension to the dunce chair.</p>
<p>So, Drumpf is actually billing himself as the effective ‘John Connor’ of the the work-a-day sucker: <strong>The pied piper who will command the blind, bayonet musket charge against ‘Terminator’ robots accoutred with lasers and tactical-nuke-armed hover ships.</strong></p>
<p>Had the rusty trombone run on <em>this</em>, more <em>truthful</em>&nbsp; platform, I doubt we’d be looking down the barrel of a 4-year Dubya v.1.01b <span style="font-size:9px;"><em>[*‘b’ for <strong>blowhard</strong>]</em></span> term of nail-biting.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.samharris.org/?URL=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D-ESCTqIJU94">Thread theme</a></p>
2016-11-14T01:35:01+00:00